


129 Ways to Get a Husband

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Banter, Cuddling, Depression, Disaster siblings, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Friendship, First Meetings, Flirting, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Prompt Fill, Recreational Drug Use, Teasing, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26086387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: In 1958, McCall's Magazine published a list of "129 Ways to Get a Husband" and, well. If that's not a tailor-made fic collection, I'm not sure what else is.129 vignette prompts, featuring all your favorite Schitt's Creek characters and then some. Tags will update with the stories, but this really is a grab-bag, y'all. (Most stories will fall in the G-T range, with the occasional E-M foray, all steamy stories will be noted as such beforehand!)
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, Alexis Rose/Mutt Schitt, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 77
Kudos: 144





	1. 112.) Get a Hunting License

**Author's Note:**

> These, like most vignettes I write, were mostly done on my phone and without any sort of beta read, so. Enter at your own risk and remember to toss a coin to your witcher while you're here <3
> 
> Title and all prompts taken from [this list](https://www.boredpanda.com/how-to-get-men-1950s-dating-article-magazine-mccalls/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic).

_**112.) Get a Hunting License** _

“David, you don’t have to do this.”

He waves a hand in Patrick’s direction and gently plucks the fabric of his sweater out from between Patrick’s fingers, before he leaves a dimple in the ribbing. He unfolds the papers in his hand calmly, pulls his license out of his wallet, and steps up to the plastic partition, the soles of his boots squeaking on the linoleum floor of the Greater Elm Counties Parks and Recreation office.

The air has the recycled, vaguely clean air conditioned smell, and the dark-paneled walls are covered with deer busts, mounted yellow perch and walleye, there’s even a sandhill crane mounted in the corner like it’s picking food off the brochure counter underneath it. Not that David could identify any of these things outside ‘bambi’, ‘fish’, ‘bird’. Which is part of what made it that much more ridiculous it was that they were even here.

Patrick steps up behind David again and lowers his voice, trying to give David one last out before anyone came to help them, but David just glares at him.

“I’ve done this before, you know.”

“The Schitt’s Creek Annual Deer Chase isn’t exactly…the kind of hunting the Brewers do.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, does your family’s kind of hunting somehow end with the animals still  _ alive _ ?”

Patrick blushes and drags a hand across the back of his neck, the other slipping into his pocket so his shoulders kind of roll forward. He’s noticed before how much it look like he’s folding in on himself when he does that, and. Well, it’s fitting. 

“No, David.”

“And does your family’s kind of hunting still, for some reason known only the God and Trudeau himself, require me to carry a specific license to kill?”

“Good Bond movie,” Patrick says without thinking, which causes David to scoff.

“You would think that,” David mutters.

“What, you’re a Brosnan fan?” Patrick pokes at David because he can hear the sound before David makes it, see the way his mouth will drop open and his eyebrows will fold downwards and he’ll be so full of frustrated affront that he won’t speak, he’ll just sort of flap his hands and make a little growling sound that always reminds Patrick a little bit of Alexis, even though he’d never actually tell David that. 

David manages to half-squawk, half-cough the word ‘Connery’ out of his mouth before a teenager rounds the corner from whatever mysterious back office exists to conduct Park business in and walks up to the counter across from David. Her name tag says ‘Tara’ on the front and there’s something about her attitude that reminds him a little bit of Stevie. 

“Can I help you,” she drawls at them, an impressive feat given that she somehow manages to snap her gum at the same time. David leans back, just enough that Patrick’s pretty sure they both noticed, and his eyebrows switch direction on his face, arching up in surprise. 

Before David, Patrick had never met anyone with such impeccable control of their facial expressions to hit just about every nuance of human emotion. At almost all times. It was as exhilarating for Patrick as it occasionally seemed exhausting for David.

“I’m here to apply for a hunting license.”

Tara shuffles the papers in a tray beside her and pulls out a photocopy of a form that looks strikingly familiar to Patrick. He’d tried to talk David into printing out the form at Ray’s, filling it out before the drove all the way out here, but David had insisted that the fewer people in town who knew what was happening, the better for his dignity, and asking Ray was as good as painting the information on the town sign.

“Name?” Tara asks.

“David Rose.”

“Address?”

“Can’t you just, like. Give me the form?”

“I could. But you’re the only person who’s come in here all day, so. Address?”

Patrick chuckles and rolls his eyes when David looks at him in a fluster. He’s trying to find a way to make his face say  _ ‘I told you so’  _ so that his mouth doesn’t have to. He wanders away, trusting David to be able to hold his own with a surly teenager, and begins to pace the small waiting area. 

There’s a set of metal-and-hunter green vinyl chairs, a matching loveseat, and a coffee table that’s supposed to look like a fresh-cut tree trunk but as a sheen on it that’s just a little too glassy. The walls are covered in the kinds of posters Patrick recognized from his uncles’ fishing cabin in Winnipeg: acceptable catch-size for bass, perch, trout; when the deer seasons ran and overlapped with grouse, elk, and duck seasons; what the acceptable ammo-load was for a single-five-or ten person hunting party, variable by province.

He’s half-way through his circle of the small space when he can practically feel the force with which Tara rolls her eyes, sighing as she takes the paper and David’s ID back to the office with her. David leans his elbows against the counter and leans back, facing Patrick with a little smile on his face.

Patrick’s struck, in that moment, with an overwhelming love for David, who couldn’t look more out of place in his Givenchy amongst the dead animals and distant, possibly imagined smell of pine. Patrick had told him so many times he didn’t have to do this that they’d ended up talking about  _ that  _ instead, about how Patrick could be so insistent that David didn’t have to change any part of himself that David didn’t feel welcome into growing, into trying to be a different person from a good place, a place of adaptability and openness to making space in his life for Patrick, and making space in Patrick’s life for him.

That’s what all this was, this stupid trip to his parent’s for the annual Brewer Family Turkey Hunt. He’d skipped it for so many years that when the obligatory invitation from his mother had arrived, he’d tossed it in the trash. It was only a stroke of bad luck and random timing that had David over before he could take out the trash, had David digging for a dropped piece of Devil’s Food just far enough that he found both the cake and the invitation, had him insisting that they both go so quickly and so forcefully that there hadn’t been anything for Patrick to do but shrug and say, “okay, David.”

So here they were.

Patrick doesn’t bother circling the second half of the room, instead cutting straight across and back to David, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him close enough that he’s able to bury his face in David’s neck, place a gentle kiss just above his pulse point before he keeps going, pulling him closer, until there isn’t any space between them and David’s arms are crossed almost to the elbows behind Patrick’s neck.

“Mm, this is nice. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You’re a Connery fan,” Patrick says, his voice teasing even as he breathes a little harder into David’s chest, presses the air out of his lungs at the same time David draws air into his. “And, apparently, the Surly Teen Whisperer. And you’re doing all this so we can take a road trip, which you hate doing, to the country, where you hate being, so that we can kill animals with my family, which is, again, just a whole lot of stuff you don’t like.”

"I like your family," David says quickly, and then shrugs. Patrick notices he manages to fit in a tiny preen at the same time. “What can I say? I’ve been told before I’m kind of a paragon of self-sacrifice.”

“Ah,” Patrick says, pulling back far enough that he can meet David's eyes, his own shining with what he knows is an aggressive amount of fondness. He can’t help it. He’s aggressively fond of David Rose. “That explains it, then.”

“It does,” David says, leaning forward until his lips meet Patrick’s, pressing into them just firmly enough that Patrick’s going to feel it when they pull apart, which they have to do all too quickly when Tara comes back out from the office, the paperwork in her hand stamped with a bright red APPROVED, David’s ID and temporary hunting license clutched in hand. 

“Your official license should come in the mail in eight to ten business days,” Tara says flatly, sliding David his paperwork, even as he holds out his hand for it.

David plucks it off the counter with a fake smile and a “thank you so much”, and then he and Patrick are back out of the building and in the quickly fading fall afternoon.

“It’s because I like you, you know,” David says as they slide in the car, and Patrick decides now’s not the time to ask why David always does that, transitions into the deeper part of the conversation at the exact moment he knows Patrick isn’t really going to be able to look at him like he wants to for these kinds of things.

“What is? The Connery?”

David scoffs but pulls the cuffs of his sweaters over his fingertips. “This. All this. I like you, Patrick, and I like your family, and I don’t want them to. Not like me, too.”

And there’s a whole world of things there to pick apart —  _ and a lifetime to do it in  _ — Patrick’s brain reassures him before he forms any other coherent thought, and. He’s never had that thought before, but he knows pretty instantly that it’s not wrong. 

So he reaches over and picks up David’s hand, interlaces David’s fingers with his own, and let’s that be enough for the moment. 


	2. 60.) Go on a diet, if you need to

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the Bad Advice ones. Fuck diets, diet culture, and anyone who believes your body defines your worth and thus you need to alter it to earn any of kind of love, affection, or value. That's horseshit. 
> 
> Also, three cheers for all the lady friendship we (didn't) get to see in Schitt's Creek!

**_60.) Go on a diet, if you need to_ **

“He asked me to go on a diet once. Emir did.” She’s picking at the label of one of the empty wine bottles with her fingernails because it’s easier than meeting any of their eyes.

“What?!” Twyla’s righteous rage and immediate loyalty help to cut through the four extra syllables she adds to the ‘a’ in ‘what’. She sits up from the arm of the couch she's been draped over, the wine in her cup dangerously close to ending up all over Alexis’s shoulder. 

Luckily, Alexis picks that moment to lean forward and lower her voice to something she must think is inconspicuous before seriously and slowly saying, “I know, like. Four good places around here we could hide a body.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Joce says, slipping the bottle from Stevie’s hands at the same moment she slips in a freshly topped-off glass. Stevie looks at her and smiles, Joce’s cheeks a ruddy pink and her eyes suspiciously bloodshot. She’s doing that bird-head-tilt thing that reminds Stevie of David, and for a second Stevie wishes David could be here. He would hate all of this, all of them simpering over her, but he’d have a distracting story to tell about an even worse ex, which would give Stevie the chance to make fun of him, which was always a surefire way to making her feel better. 

It didn’t surprise her that most people didn’t understand the way their relationship worked. She didn’t need them too. 

David might be an asshole, but David would never tell her to go on a diet. 

“It’s fine,” she sniffs, rubbing her nose and the corners of her eyes with the cuff of her flannel shirt.

“Fuck him,” Ronnie says in what Stevie’s come to interpret as her ‘encouraging voice’, raising her glass in their combined direction from where she sits at the end of the bar.

“Not anymore,” Stevie shoots back, and they all laugh, and drink, and Twyla pipes up with a story about a boyfriend her mom had who’d decided the government was spying on them all through the toys in cereal boxes, so they’d had a ritual bonfire of all her Frosted Flakes in the back yard, until the boyfriend had gotten drunk and passed out and caught his boots on fire. 

And maybe, Stevie thinks as she unwisely finishes her fifth glass of wine, she’s got more than  _ one  _ friend in Schitt’s Creek. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, speaking of lady friends, have you signed up for [Elevate](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Elevate_Femslash) yet?!


	3. 93.) Find out about the girls he hasn’t married. Don’t repeat the mistakes they made

**_93.) Find out about the girls he hasn’t married. Don’t repeat the mistakes they made_ ** ****

“Why didn’t it work. With Rachel.” 

Patrick goes still underneath him, but David keeps his hand moving, ghost fingers grazing Patrick’s nipples, the hair beneath his bellybutton, the vaguely smiley-faced scar just over his collarbone, a left-over memory of a butane flame, the end of a Bic lighter, and more tequila sunrises than any one human being should ever consume. “You mean besides the fact that she had a vagina?”

David pushes himself up onto one shoulder. “Don’t do that. Don’t be all biologically reductive. You and Rachel broke up lots, right?”

“Right.”

“And that means you got back together lots, right?”

“Not as many times as we broke up,” Patrick says, his attempt at a joke falling flat between them. Patrick pushes up onto his elbow in a mirror of David and gives him a wary smile, reaches out to run a thumb along the crest of David’s cheek, visible in the orange-yellow glow of the streetlight outside Ray’s. “What’s this about, David?”

“Well seeing as how I  _ just  _ found out she existed —” Patrick opens his mouth to explain but David shakes his head and presses a finger to Patrick’s lips. Patrick wraps his lips around the top of it and bites down, just hard enough that David shivers. “ — I was just curious. You’ve heard, so many of my bad break up stories.”   
“ _ So  _ many. More than I ever would’ve thought possible for a man of your age, actually.”

“Okay that’s enough of that.” David pulls his hands back and lays on his back, crossing his arms and staring at the ceiling, cutting occasional glares at Patrick, who laughs and, after a second, snuggles down next to David and pulls him back into his chest, nuzzling his head and fitting them back together into their original positions. 

“I’m sorry. You’re right, fair is fair. I guess it’s time to unlock the box. I don’t — I don’t really know why it didn’t work with Rachel.”

“Oh come on,” David rolls his eyes so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if Patrick could feel it against his torso. 

“No, I’m serious. I think the not knowing is part of what got to  _ be  _ the problem. Like, after years, she and I got to this place where we were just...we just  _ were _ .” 

“Mmkay, I don’t think I’m following,” David says, pressing the corner of his nail into one of Patrick’s freckles, dragging it to the next one in a connect-the-dots he doesn’t have a picture for. 

“Rachel really liked to have all her girlfriends over for book club,” Patrick says, and David just presses his lips together. He’s learning his boyfriend often has to talk the long way into a point, if he’s going to talk his way there at all. “And I used to sit in the office, so she could have the living room, and just think.  _ This feels so grown-up _ . But, I mean, of course it was grown up, we were  _ grownups _ ? I kept expecting that feeling to go away, but every day with Rachel felt like...like some kind of adolescent  _ Groundhog Day _ . And eventually I just realized my entire life was going to feel like that. Like sitting in a room, just outside it, feeling like I was still playing at adulthood, at a relationship, at being. I don’t know. More than happy. Rachel made me happy, minus the sex stuff. But she didn’t make me feel like — like I could open the door and stop pretending at a thing, and actually do it. I think the thing that Rachel did wrong was. Not being you, basically.” 

David’s voice catches in his throat and he has to clear it three times before he can speak with any kind of predictable stability. There’s a knot in his throat that’s attached to the back of his diaphragm, and with every word Patrick says, David feels it grow, tighten. Settle deeper.

“The only book club I ever went to was for Lisa Rinna’s sex book and I have a feeling Rachel’s get-togethers didn’t end with everyone having an acid-fueled backrub chain in Harry Hamlin’s hot tub .”

Patrick wraps David impossibly tighter and laughs again, silently this time, a shaking of his chest that makes David’s head move and his mouth curve into a smile. “Truer words, David Rose.”

He kisses David on the head and David presses his face into the soft skin of Patrick’s belly, into the warmth and softness of this person who blew into his life like a whirlwind, knocked a Patrick-shaped hole in his heart and refused to apologize for it. He’d asked about Rachel because some part of him would never stop being a glutton for punishment, would never stop picking at the scabs until they turned into scars.

But he’d also asked because he’d never been more terrified of ending up like someone than he did like Rachel...whatever her last name was. The Small Town Rachel who managed to lose one of the best people David’s ever met in a life full of meeting people. David had been ready to turn gravity upside, turn dark to light, if it meant not doing whatever it was Rachel had done to put Patrick, quite literally, on the road to Schitt’s Creek.

He wasn’t blaming her. He was no stranger to keeping secrets from the people you cared about, and he and Patrick had several conversations ahead of them about what he’d done to her and to himself by leaving the way he did.

But David’s also still learning to trust himself, and Patrick, and his ability not to completely fuck up everything he touches, so he had to ask.

And now he knows. And he thinks maybe that terrified, adrenaline-y tang in the back of his mouth isn’t panic over losing Patrick after all. That maybe that’s what it tastes like, what it feels like, what it looks like when the person you’re falling for actually decides to catch you.


	4. 97.) Hide your Phi Beta Kappa key if you own one — later on junior can play with it

**_97.) Hide your Phi Beta Kappa key if you own one — later on junior can play with it._ **

“Hey, Patrick?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s this?”

David has finally hit the last box in their bedroom, and if he gets it unpacked and everything put away, Patrick promised to hand-make the good pizza dough for dinner that night, the kind of that left the pads of his fingers satiny with flour, put little specks of cornmeal under his nails. They’d long found a middle ground between Patrick’s ignorance about proper hand care and David’s perhaps rigorous standards, and one of the areas David had been surprisingly willing to compromise was the kind of messy Patrick got when he cooked. 

“What’s what?” Patrick sling a kitchen towel over his shoulder and leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. He’s still hasn’t changed after closing the store, but his deep blue shirt is cuffed to the elbows and he’s got enough buttons undone that if David didn’t know better, he’d have called it Patrick’s version of a party shirt. 

“This little...square thing? It looks like a watch key, but it’s on a necklace and it’s not with your other  _ jewelry,  _ so,” David’s lips curl around the word and he can’t bite back the laughter quick enough — they both know that Patrick’s wedding band and the occasional watch didn’t constitute jewelry.

Which is what made the little golden fob, floating loosely at the bottom of the box, that much more confusing. 

“Where’d you get that?” Patrick is immediately by David’s side, slipping the engraved gold out of David’s hand and turning it over and over again in his fingers, tracing the embossed ‘ΦΒΚ’ on one side, the three stars and pointing finger at the top when he flips it over. 

“It was in the bottom of the box,” David says, reacing out and plucking it back from Patrick while he looks at writing on the outside of the box.

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“This is — this isn’t an  _ us  _ box. This is a  _ me  _ box.”

David splutters and blushes. When they’d started the process of packing to move in to the cottage, it’d seemed easier to pack up the things they had that would fit the communal spaces first, and then each pack their own boxes of...whatever. That way David wouldn’t have to keep track of exactly how many shades of blue button-down Patrick owned, and David wouldn’t have to explain the middle nine steps of his skincare regimine. At least, they wouldn’t until they were ready to. Until the stress of moving was behind them and they were ready to slip into the little stresses that would make up the colors of their days together. “It says bedroom on it,” David finally finishes. “Not your name!”

“No, I know!” Patrick immediately reaches out and puts his hand on the back of David’s neck, still looking at the box. It’s an almost instinctual move, the need to touch David in a moment of potential panic. “It’s actually, um. My mom packed this one. Back before I moved to Schitt’s Creek. Or, I mean,  _ I  _ had already moved, she was — she sent me a bunch of stuff, after a while, and this must have been one of those boxes I never got to.”

“Your mom sent you a bunch of stuff and you left it in boxes for  _ years _ ? Does this mean there’s a whole treasure-trove of, like. Graphic screen-printed tees just waiting to be discovered?”

Patrick laughs and spins so that his back is against the dresser, his eyes leaving the fob enough to meet David’s eyes. “You know it. Fanny packs and an acid-washed members only jacket, too.” And even though he knows Patrick is kidding — pretty sure Patrick is kidding — he can’t quite keep the grimace off his face, which of course just makes his troll of a husband laugh harder. “There was just only so much space at Ray’s, you know, and once I had gotten to most of the big stuff, unpacking the rest of the boxes just seemed…”

Patrick trails off and David lets him, turning his body so he’s leaning against the dresser next to his husband. He watches the glint of the gold in the low bedroom lighting and, after almost an entire minute passes and it doesn’t seem like Patrick’s going to answer the question, David tries again.

“So...what is it?”   
  


“It’s a Phi Beta Kappa key.”

“A what now?”

“Phi Beta Kappy. The fraternity?”

“Hm. I’m familiar with them, like, conceptually, but the arts college I went to was more, uh, drum circles and disdainful drug addictions than  _ Animal House _ .”

Patrick seems taken aback that David knows the reference, but Patrick isn’t the only one who expanded some of his sartorial borders since they’d started making space for each other in their combined life together. 

“Wrong kind of fraternity, although I did one of  _ those,  _ too.”

“You were in a  _ frat  _ and somehow I’m just now hearing of it?”

“Where do you think all the snapbacks come from, David?”

“Sportsball. Don’t they give those things away as, like, parting gifts?”

Patrick laughs so hard he shakes the dresser, knocking over a framed picture taken at the reception, Patrick leaning into David’s shoulder while David bites his lip and seems to study the room around him, Johnny and Moira dancing to his left, Stevie and Alexis draped over each other mid-laugh on his right. 

“Okay, well, to be fair a lot of them came from sports, too. No, but, um. Phi Beta Kappa is like. An honors fraternity?”

The silence stretches between them and when David speaks, there’s enough laughter at the edges that Patrick begins to blush immediately. “Patrick?” Patrick wraps his hand around the key. “Patrick…?” David’s drawing out his name like music and Patrick loves it as much as he hates it. 

“Yes, David?”

“Are you a  _ genius _ ?”

“No!”

“Of course not. You just belong to an exclusive smart-people club that gives out golden keys, and I’m assuming has some kind of Grecian joining ceremony involving lots of chanting and waving censers of nag champa around?”

“David.”

“Oh my god. You’re Illuminati, aren’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be able to admit it. Blink twice if you’re secretly Illuminati.”

“Okay,” Patrick’s laughing, and so is David, and it’s easiest for Patrick to slide the key into his pocket and back out of sight. He’s just pulling his hand back out of his pocket when David’s fingers wrap around his wrist.

“You don’t have to put it away.”

“Yeah, well, if I  _ am  _ in the Illuminati, leaving my Secret Membership Necklace out seems like a bad plan, doesn’t it.”

David nods, and hums, his thumb gliding over Patrick’s wrist bone. He’s still looking at Patrick’s pocket, which is close enough to Patrick’s groin that the extra attention is starting to make a low heat creep up the back of Patrick’s neck. 

“You had to be really smart to get that, didn’t you? And work really hard?”

“Yeah. I did. Straight A’s, character letters, interviews, applications, the whole nine yards.”

“God that sounds like such a pain in the ass. Why’d you do it?”

“Every Brewer man has.”

“So?”

“So at that point, I was having a hard time remembering that, unlike Barbie, acquiring all the accessories of a life don’t actually make a life.”

The tenderness in David’s eyes when he nods is enough to break Patrick open.

“Well. You’re not there anymore,” David says quietly, but decisively. “But it also doesn't cease to exist. Nor does the hard work you did to get this.” David reaches into Patrick’s pocket and pulls out the key. “So we put it on the board.”

The board, hanging in their kitchen, opposite their dining nook. A kind of giant moodboard that David had begun to curate of their life together, pictures and flyers and flowers and, now, a little speck of gold, that over the years, would begin to shine a little less but never lose its spot in the upper right corner, until decades from now when a nephew would pluck it off with chubby fingers, stick it in between his freshly emerged front teeth, and giggle like champagne bubbles.


	5. 26.) Don’t room with a girl who is a sad sack and let her pull you down to her level

“David!” Alexis is screeching at him from the end of his bed, but honestly, she sounds like she’s a million miles away, yelling at him through water. “I thought you were, like. Better!”

“You don’t just  _ get  _ better,” he says, his voice scratchy from disuse. He hasn’t bothered speaking most of the day, because who would he talk to who wasn’t in this room? And he sure as hell wasn’t ready to leave his bed again.

“But you went to yoga! Are you sure this whole ‘panic attack’ thing is even real? I know what Ted said, but...I mean, we all know what it  _ really  _ means.” She flips her hand through the air in a dismissive little circle, and David feels something inside himself shrink even further, edges curling in and in until they’re rolled like leaves licked by flame. 

He tries to shrug, but his shoulders are heavy. “I don’t know. I don’t care. Leave me alone.”

He’d roll over and face the wall, but his body is heavy and the bed is warm and the pillow has finally molded to his head enough that he’s comfortable, and Alexis is going to leave soon and he’s going to be able to close his eyes and go to sleep again. 

Only, she’s not leaving, she’s just standing there, staring at him, her arms crossed, her brow furrowed, one blonde wave falling in front of her eye. He’d say she looked worried, if worry was ever an emotion that ran both ways in the Rose family. Instead, David felt like one consistent font of worry, a worry sponge for everyone around him, and for the thousandth time in a voice he can’t shut up, he wonders how the David who used to glamor his way across the world now can’t manage to pull himself out of this sad, small Canadian motel room.

The corner of the bed shifts under Alexis’s weight as she sits, one hand landing on David’s ankle, and later he’ll tell himself he didn’t pull it back because even the effort to do that feels Herculean. 

In reality, it’s because he can’t remember the last time she touched him like this, soft and compassionate and without expectations, where no one else would see and she wouldn’t be able to get anything out of it, later. He turns his head and looks at her as best he can, the pain in his neck low and radiating from the back of his skull. His eyelids feel heavy and he thinks he should care more, about these little aches and pains in his body, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He doesn’t remember how. 

“You need to see someone,” Alexis says, and the scoff David pulls from his chest is impressively deep, considering. “Not like that, David. Who would you even see around her professionally, anyway? We don’t have any money or, like. Chickens to barter, or whatever.”

David laughs. He can’t help himself. He’s annoyed, that he still hasn’t found a way to be immune to some of his sister’s lesser charms after all these years. She giggles, too, and then slaps softly at his ankle. “Seriously, David. You should  _ see  _ somebody. You need a friend. Or like. And  _ adult  _ friend. Or something.”

That’s enough that David manages to, well. Not sit up, but turn his torso on the bed so that he can glare at her. “Are you telling me I need to get laid?

“Ew, David, no! You are my brother, you are, like, a non-sexual being, please. Gross. Okay, no. Just. If you  _ were  _ going to. Find an adult friend. I think it’d be good for you. It’ll help you get out of whatever this is.” She waves her hand in the air over his prone body like she’s performing and exorcism. 

“You know. That’s what Jocelyn said, too. At yoga class. That I need to have sex with someone.”

A few long beats pass before Alexis lets out a quiet, shuddering, “Gross.”

“Yeah.”

“ _ Really  _ gross.”

“ _ Yeah. _ ” He takes a deep breath, chewing on the corner of his lip first. “Maybe not completely wrong, though.”

Alexis nods, and stands. “Good. You’re welcome for the life guidance, David.”

“Okay then.”

“Seriously. I know how much you used to pay Naomi to tell you to get up and take a shower as your ‘life coach’.”

“Don’t you have a yokel to seduce?”

She wrinkles her nose at him and boops the air in front of her where his nose might be, if he weren’t still lying in bed. “I’ll tell Mutt you said hello, David.”

“Swallow strychnine, Alexis.”

“Mm, so sweet. I was serious about that shower, though, David. It’s getting very Colin-Farrel’s-leather-couch-circa-2005 in here right now.”

He screeches, and throws a pillow at her as she ducks out of the room, blowing kisses over her shoulder as she pulls the door shut behind her. 


	6. 82.) On the first date, tell him you’re not thinking about getting married

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some porny bits in this one, friends! Brace yourself!

**_82.) On the first date, tell him you’re not thinking about getting married!_ **

“I don’t — want to get married,” Mutt grunts into the soft skin of her neck. He’s got his arms around her waist, slamming his hips up into her as she grinds back and forth against him, the rhythm delicious to her body, that hasn’t been touched like this in  _ way  _ to long.

She braces one hand against his chest and pushes up, sitting up and back while he slides his hands up the sides of her thighs, looking at her with dark eyes and skin that’s damp with sweat and rainwater. She slows the pace, but continues to rock against him, the head of his dick rubbing steadily over her g-spot. She shivers and licker her lips, her throat thick with that hazy sex sound she’s really, really missed. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice low as he continues to drag his hands up and down her thighs, around to the swell of her ass, his calloused, scarred fingers scratching roughly against her soft skin, making her shiver more deeply, makes her breath catch as she bottoms out on top of him. “No marriage. Not for me. Not my jam.”

“Your jam?”

“You know what I mean.” Suddenly, his grip on her ass intensifies and Mutt is keeping her lifted above him, only an inch, maybe, but enough that he’s able to take back control, roll his hips up into her quick and hard, and she gasps and doesn’t bother to choke back smoething like a scream, the sound echoing back to her from the warm wood of the barn walls. He does it again, and she makes the sound, and the third time he does it she can feel her orgasm starting to well in the base of her spine. 

She leans forward and presses her hand on top of his mouth, gasping when he shifts his head enough to catch her pinky finger between his teeth. He presses harder, forcing his mouth shut as she snaps her hips in time with his, slips her hand between their bodies and presses two fingers to her clit in rough circles until she’s there, she’s coming had, and fast, clenching down around Mutt’s dick as he grunts her name and digs his nails into her skin as he comes. 

Alexis drops her forehead to his chest for a second as she rides out the last few waves of her orgasm, closing her eyes and floating for as long as she can in that warm, fuzzy, fucked-out space where all her muscles felt like they were full of water and her head felt clear enough to see through so much of the ridiculousness she couldn’t stop thinking about lately — her mother, this town, what she was doing to twyla. Her brother, for some god-forsaken reason. 

But before long, Mutt shifts beneath her she rolls to the side, letting Mutt up to take care of the condom while she spreads her hair out behind her and away from her body. She  _ hates  _ the feeling of sweaty hair stuck to her back.

“Why did you tell me that? That marriage thing?” She calls to Mutt, listening as he fills a glass from the bathroom tap. He passes it to her when he comes back, slipping into bed beside her with a smile and a shrug. 

“You just. Seem like maybe that’s the kind of thing that might be important to you.”

“Really?” Alexis has had people think she was lots of different kinds of girl. But the kind to whom marrying might be an important issue wasn’t  _ really  _ amongst them. “You think so?”

The look Mutt gives her is an odd one, one that’s full of wariness, and respect, and a fondness she’s not used to from people she’s just slept with, especially from people she’s just slept with who also technically have girlfriends.  _ Especially  _ when that girlfriend is someone who Alexis thinks is actually probably a pretty great person, who doesn’t deserve what Alexis and Mutt literally just finished doing.

“Yeah, Alexis. I think so.”

“Well. Thank you for thinking so, I guess. And that’s like, fine. That you feel that way.” She picks up a chunk of hair and turns it back and forth slowly ikn the low light, looking for split ends she can pull out. She glances at him out of hte corner of her eye, and he’s smiling at the ceiling, his hands looped behind his head. 

“Cool.” 

They stay that way for a few more minutes before Alexis slides out of the bed, grabbing her clothes from the floor and kissing Mutt softly on the cheek as she passes to the bathroom. 


	7. 8.) Take several short vacations at different places rather than one long one at one place

**_8.) Take several short vacations at different places rather than one long one at one place_ **

The first time they see each other, it’s over a coffee display at a Doubletree, a dark-eyed stranger reaching for a handful of sugar in the raw packets at the same time a shorter, paler man with eyes too big for his face reaches for two coffee stirrers — one to stir his tea, swirling the honey he’s just squeezed from the little packet, the other to slip between his teeth to give his mouth something to do while his hands are busy grabbing a lid and napkins and one of the cardboard to go sleeves. 

They leave without speaking.

The second time they notice each other (they actually see each other several times in between, separately, almost without noticing, their eyes somehow always drawn to each other across lobbies and ballrooms full of slightly stale air and slowly wilting lunch salads) is more violent than it should be, a checking of shoulders as one flips through his presentation for the afternoon: Optimizing Business Margins: Keeping Your Small Business Swimming, while the other flips through an article on the upcoming dsquared2 line that, once up a time he might have actually been able to afford.

The phone goes flying, the binder hits the floor, and limbs tangle with suitcases until the taller of the two is screeching and waving his hands through the air like a bird that can’t quite figure out how to fly, while the guy with his blue button-down cuffed to his elbows lays on the ground and can’t help but grin at him. Eventually, the flapping calms down enough that he’s able to offer his hand to the man on the floor, and finally two strangers becomes two-people-who-don’t-know-anything-about-each-other-but-names, which is a start to a great many potential things.

“You pack quite a punch there…”

“David. And last I checked, the only one with any punch around here is you.”

“Is that so?” He should drop David’s hand. But by the same token, David should probably also drop his, so who can say who’s to blame for the skin of their palms, the pads of their fingers still pressed together. 

“It is…”

“Patrick. Brewer.”

“Holy shit. Huh.”

“What?”

“Oh, I just assumed the keynote speaker of this little  _ raucous affair  _ would be a little more John Slattery and a little less…” he waves his hand in Patrick’s direction, and Patrick doesn’t understand the reference, but he thinks he understands what David is getting at.

“Thanks. I think.”

“You’re welcome.” And when David finally drops his hand, Patrick finds himself missing it. Not a lot, but enough that he sticks his hand in his pocket to try and stifle the feeling. But he sees David noticing, sees the little flicker of something unpleasant across his fact, and Patrick’s stomach sinks.

“You know, I —”

“Okay, bye then.”

And then David is gone, stepping immediately into an elevator that’s just sort of...waiting, although Patrick doesn’t remember him pushing the button, and the last five minutes have been so odd Patrick wonders if he’s dreaming, or caught in some kind of weird fairy tale.

Patrick nails his speech, and has a relatively peaceful, if devastatingly boring, rest of his weekend. He doesn't see David again, and can’t decide if he’s happy about it. 

It takes six more months for them to speak again, although they seem to be in some kind of lock-step tour of the local business seminars, entrepreneurial workshops, and other necessary-but-dull career and network building activities that Patrick thrived on and David never quite seemed to click-in to. 

They’re seven people apart in line at a hot foods buffet featuring, for some reason, both lobster fried rice and meatball sub sandwiches; Patrick can see the back of David’s shoulders disappearing through the door at exactly fifteen minutes past the start of the Saturday night social hour; David can’t help but notice Patrick’s cologne as they crowd into the same elevator, trapped at opposite corners amongst other people who seem to join their little crew of travelling workshop attendees: Ray, who seems to own approximately one thousand businesses, and Marge who’s working a dog grooming shop out of a repurposed passenger van, and Gwen, who’s recently left her garage-owning husband and needs to find a way to monetize her small-scale custom leatherwork business.

It’s almost Christmas the next time they speak, the stool between them at the bar emptying as the bartender slides David his cosmopolitan and moves to pop the top off Patrick’s beer at the same time. Patrick catches David’s eye and smiles, lifting his beer greeting, and David just nods, pressing his lips together in something that’s polite, but not quite a smile, and Patrick remembers that look outside the elevators, the way his stomach had flipped, and his hands start to sweat. 

He takes a long swallow of beer and is trying to pick which of the hundred things in his mind he wants to say first, when David speaks first.

“Thank you, for that lecture on profile diversity and marginal returns. It helped pull RA through a rough third quarter.”

Patrick talks business for a literal living. It shouldn’t make him feel like this, to hear words like that coming out of the mouth of a man like David. But he shifts on the stool, spreading his thighs slightly as he clears his throat and smiles, letting it take up as much of his face as he can. He’s sincere when he says, “I’m glad to hear that, David. RA is the store you run, right?”

David nods. “Rose Apothecary. We specialize in small-scale artisanal bath and home good products, but. We’re more of a general store.”

“Sounds kind of specific to me.”

“A specific general store, then.” And David smiles and Patrick knows that, in all this time, all the other polite folding of his lips hadn’t been anywhere near what counted as a smile for David. 

“Who takes care of your store when you’re out here at all these conferences?”

“My sister and her boyfriend, some of the time. Or my best friend, when we’ve got enough wine in stock to bribe her with.” He says this second part with an eye roll and a laugh and Patrick smiles imagining the person who can go toe-to-toe with the kind of person he’s already realizing David is, all swirling dark hair and an unrelenting, biting wit. 

“Sounds like things are in good hands, then?”

“They’re in hands, that’s for sure.” David finishes the rest of his drink and motions at the bartender for another round. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s out there for you, when you’re not doing this?”

Patrick drains his beer in a long, slow pull, wiping his hand across the back of his mouth. There’s more regret in his voice than he’d anticipated. “Not a lot, David. Not anymore.”

“Oof. That sounds like a whole international airport of baggage.”

Patrick chuckles. “No, no. Just. One piece of baggage, really. An ex-fiance.”

“Ah.”

“It’s complicated. Am I the world’s biggest cliche if I say it’s me and not her?”

“Yes.”

Patrick snorts out a laugh so hard it makes David laugh, too, and when Patrick finally stops, there are tears streaming down his face. “Thank you for your honesty, David.”

“Any time.”

The bartender motions to David and Patrick, asking if they’d like another, and both men decline.

“I should get to my room,” David says, reaching for his wallet and sliding set of bills across the bar. Patrick does the same, grabbing the second room key from his wallet in a moment of impulse.

“You could. Come to mine. If you feel up to it.” Patrick’s leaning in so his voice can carry even as he drops it, and David plucks the plastic rectangle off the bar quickly, passing it between his fingers and glancing between it and Patrick. 

“I, um. Patrick, I don’t.”

“Look. I don’t. Know what the rules are here, the whole lecturer-attendee code of conduct, but. I am enjoying your company and would like to keep doing so.”

“And the ex-fiance?”

“I told you. It was me. Not her. She stayed the same person and I realized there was always going to be...something missing, for me.” Patrick’s eyes drag down the front of David’s body, so he catches the way his breath seems to pause, the way his throat moves when he swallows. 

“That sounds like a fascinating story. One I’d like to hear more about.” He meets Patrick’s eye. “I need to wash this delightfully stale bar air off first, but. What room are you in?”


	8. 116.) Paint Your Number on a Roof and Say "Gimme a Buzz, Pilots"

**116.) Paint Your Name and Number on a Roof and Say “Give Me a Buzz, Pilots”**

“Hello?”

“Hello? Is this….who is this?”

“.....you called me.”

A chuckle. Soft, breath over the phone receiver like a breeze that foretells a storm. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m Patrick, Patrick Brewer. I’m looking for...for whoever wrote their name on the roof of the abandoned barn off Route Six.”

Silence. Long, stretching longer. Hesitation turns to incredulity turns to awkwardness and the call is about to disconnect when, “I’m sorry — what?!”

“The barn? Off Route Six?”   


“I’m familiar with it — sadly, it's not actually abandoned.”

“You mean a human person lives there?!”

“I mean Mutt lives there, so.”

“I….don’t know what that means.”

“You wouldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m still catching up — where did you get my number?”

“Off…..the….roof? Your number, a message that says ‘Buzz Me, Pilots’ with a little heart over the ‘i’?”

Another pause, steadily increasing rate of breath, clipping of consonants, a harsh and brash, “What the fuck?!” that feels immediately like a home coming. “Oh, I’m going to  _ kill  _ them.”

“Kill who?”

“Ste--the people who did this. My alleged sister and former best friend, and based on the pun, I’m guessing my sister's living labrador of a boyfriend.” Another laugh, longer, bubbling from a deep place and crashing across the phone line like the impact of a bullet, sharp and fierce, shrapnel of joy unavoidable as both mouths tilt up into a smile. “It’s not funny! I don’t even know you!”

“Sure you do. I’m Patrick.”

“Patrick, who is apparently a pilot and uses the opportunity to scam on strange men?”

“To be fair, I didn’t know you were a man when I called, that happened to be a very lucky bonus. And I’m pretty sure  _ I  _ wasn’t the one turning Canada’s airspace into a giant billboard for my romantic gains.”

"Neither was I!”

Third time’s the charm and this laugh peters out into something warmer, a spark to huddle around, cup gently, keep safe from the smallest gust of doubt.

“You know. I still haven’t gotten your name.”

“Oh! Sorry, it’s David — David Rose.”

“Well, David Rose. It’s been lovely talking to you.”

“Same, Patrick. Good luck out there with all the piloting.”

“Thanks, David. I will. You should try it sometime!”

“Flying. A plane. Me. Absolutely. You saw that Tom Hanks movie where he landed the plane on the river, right? I’m sure it’ll be just like that, only with, you know, the exact opposite outcome.”

“It’s not as hard as you might think. I’d be happy to show you sometime.”

“Taking a plane ride from a stranger? That’s definitely one of the more original ways to end up on  _ My Favorite Murder.” _

“You know, I think Karen and Georgia would appreciate the symbolism.”

“I’ll make sure my sister includes that in her post-murder email.”

“The same sister that wrote your name on the top of a barn hoping it’d land you a date with a random stranger?”

“One and the same.” That warm pause, back again, a little longer, a little richer, a little more reluctant to hang up on both sides. 

“Seriously, David. I know you don’t know me, but. Any guy who’s family loves him enough to try that hard to find him is someone worth getting to know better.”

A half-hearted scoff, a rolled eye and flapped hand that remain unseen and yet, somehow, deeply felt. 

“I don’t know if I’d frame it that way? But. Assuming we can keep both of our feet firmly on the Earth….I think I’d like that.”

“Well. Can you give me like a half-hour window to get your feet above you for a bit?”

“.... _ ohmyGOD  _ did you really just say that to me?! We..I...I don’t even know what you look like! How do you know that’s not going to, like, deeply and personally offend me?”

“Are you deeply and personally offended?”

“Only that you think we’d be all said and done in half an hour.”

“Hm. We’re going to have fun, David Rose. Wherever our feet end up.”

And fun it is. At sea level, stripped and sweaty and learning the names to call one another when the lights are off. At 30,000 feet, white knuckles on one joystick while a slick, fast hand makes easy work of another. 25 feet underground in a padded, insulated wine cellar, where a 1870 vintage meets a band of new millenia gold — five bands, in fact — and a pilot and the chance he took stand together, palms pressed, and reach out from under the earth to touch the face of god. 


End file.
